


A Small Collection of Secrets

by knyf



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Crossdressing, Depression, Eating Disorders, M/M, mentions of drug and alcohol abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:26:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knyf/pseuds/knyf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikey thing is that he wears women's clothing. Frank's thing is that he watches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Small Collection of Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Something I dug out of an old notebook. Mikey Way irl is not one of my favorite people right now, but Frank/Mikey has always been my favorite.

And on him, Frank thinks, there's something so sad about sundresses A size too small, out of the hope that they don't sag so pathetically around his lack of a chest. (This never works.) His legs, spindly and too-long, make even modest dresses ride high on his thighs, revealing knobby knees and perpetual bruises. And the colors, so unlike him, colors that highlight how out of his element he feels. Pale yellows and pink, sometimes a soft blue. The colors of a newborn, with all the vulnerability intact. His dresses lay flat and crinkled with the permanent press of thrift-store neglect, and if they search for curves to hug, they are left lonely on the desolate landscape of a sad stick man.

There are some things, in living together, that were hard to hide. Things, or rather, secrets, if the inherent secrecy wasn't spoiled by knowing. Mikey's thing is wearing women's clothing. Frank's thing is that he watches.

Truthfully, it was something that terrified Mikey upon hearing Gerard make the suggestion _hey... what if we get an apartment together?_ It struck something deep and anxious in Mikey's chest, because he knew, knew from knowing Gerard, that it was more than just a suggestion. It was _Gerard_ , meaning, for him, it was already reality. Mentioning it out loud and getting consent were technicalities.

A week later and they're living together – Gerard, Mikey, Frank, Ray, and Bob. _Just for a while, you know? While we're writing. Helps the creative process._  
But Mikey knew it was more. He could see the anxiety in Gerard's eyes, the nervousness of his smile... Gerard's sobriety was a newfound thing, barely a month in and Gerard is scared out of his wits, so terrified of slipping and using, terrified of the dark places in him that pushed him to sedate himself in the first place. Mikey is happy to help, overjoyed to be needed, by his hero of all people. So he's fine, on one level, to be living with his closest friends – his brothers.

Except for Mikey's innate and pressing want of privacy, especially in the face of his abnormal pastimes. Thrifting for that one dress, hoping for this time to be the occasion that one among his selection will be the _right one;_ the one that finally fills up that empty part of himself that cries out in pains from hollowness when things are quiet.

Sure, Mikey had his own room. But among the drawbacks of an amazing old Victorian house was that not every lock exactly worked. This included, as his luck would have it, the lock on Mikey's door. And he found, more surprisingly, the deadbolt of a lock he kept on his heart. Because the other complication of close quarters was the flush in his face and the weakness in his knees that hit Mikey whenever he looked at Frank. Which was unnervingly, having to live with the guy. Running into him in the morning, out of the bathroom, the guitarist yawning in his bathroom and smiling a hello that made Mikey's heart so forgetful that it left out a few beats. He always wonders, when he looks at Frank, if Frank can hear how loudly his heart is beating, the mistakes it makes, or he wonders if Frank notices Mikey's step faltering as he tries to keep his footing around Frank. And Mikey knows, knows it's ridiculous, the way he reacts to Frank, so lost in him that he's falling, literally falling, on stage, to the ironic soundtrack of _“waaay down...”_ But what's more ridiculous than even that, Mikey thinks, is what he does behind closed doors.

_Dresses._ Of all things, dresses. Mikey knew it was a stupid desperate thing. To think that wearing a dress would fix things for him. Would make Frank like him. Mikey knew it wouldn't, but it didn't stop him from cradling the desperate hope that if he looked just a little more like a girl, that maybe Frank might like him like one. To cling to the pathetic notion that Frank might take his eyes off Gerard and all the girls... that maybe if he can make himself really, _really_ pretty that Frank might want to touch him like he did Gerard.

And then there was Gerard.

To say that he and Gerard had secrets wasn't entirely true, because they did, just not from each other. Not completely. There knowledge of each other wasn't fully intimate, but far surpassed any outsiders'. Which was why Mikey simply understood that Gerard suggesting they get a house together wasn't a suggestion as much as a cry for help. This was part of Gerard's secrets – not being the fearless leader he needed to be. Feeling weak and not ever wanting to admit it.  
Knowing each other as well as they did, Mikey should have been a fraction less surprised when Gerard walked into Mikey's room one day, unannouced...  
  
… and Mikey was standing in front of the mirror, pigeon-toed and humiliated, wearing a light lavender dress, barefoot on the hardwood floors. 


End file.
